


for all of the times I never could (I’ll be good)

by gingergenower



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Self Harm (not the traditional type of self harm but still needs a warning), Temporary Character Death, Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 13:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: With every book he examined, every incantation painstaking copied out, he dictated his plans onto the page and decided it was fate even as he was writing it. He wanted to be a god and he is; there are consequences.Keeping Jester alive now means nothing in the face of his choices.





	for all of the times I never could (I’ll be good)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from [I'll Be Good](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scd-uNNxgrU) by Jaymes Young, and this fic is inspired by the recent episode of talks machina, wherein Laura points out if Caleb saves his parents the Nein would die, and Liam does not want to talk about it: I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT
> 
> (also I break like fifty million dnd rules here but I’m a) new to the game and b) not really interested in the rules when I’m not playing tbqh)

Caleb doesn’t have any magic left- just the empty, human hands he uses to cast it pressing hard over the stab wound in Jester’s back. He’s cradling her in his lap, arms locked in position around her, stiff and aching, but he hardly notices it; as numb to it in his fear as they both are to noise outside of their pocket of collapsed cave, and he can hear every labored breath she takes.

When she coughs, her body convulsing with panic and pain, it’s all he can do to grip her tighter and whisper in her ear that it will pass, it will end, she will be alright.

She nods even as she’s choking, tears rolling out of the corners of her eyes unchecked. Too tired to do more than slump against his chest when it’s over, her hand falls back into her lap- and the light is dim, but it’s enough that Caleb sees her palm come away wet with blood.

He tilts forwards until his lips touch her clammy forehead, eyes closing like he’s just resting there.

She wasted her last spell on Caleb, on a broken arm in the middle of the battle that brought the cave down on them, but she had a couple of messages left. Over an hour ago, he listened as she told Fjord they were trapped but ok, and added that ‘we’ meant Caleb too and she was kinda hurt but it was alright and anyway, could they come and get them out?

Fjord must have been able to hear the pain in her voice, because all he said was the rest of the Mighty Nein were going to get them out, and to hold on

“Caleb?” The lilt of Jester’s accent is soft, her head on his shoulder as she looks up to him through half-closed eyes. “Where are they?”

Faith isn’t something Caleb thought he would ever feel again- trust and loyalty as compelling as devotion a curse to him- but he feels it now. Jester inspires as much delight in those around her as she finds in doodling tiny smiley faces in the margins of his spellbook, and none of them overlook how precious she is.

They love her and Caleb believes in that.

“They’re coming.”

Watching his expression for a moment, slow to understand, Jester’s eyes flutter closed again.

She trusts too much.

With every book he examined, every incantation painstaking copied out, he dictated his plans onto the page and decided it was fate even as he was writing it. He wanted to be a god and he is; there are consequences.

Keeping Jester alive now means nothing in the face of his choices.

“I didn’t mean to make you sad.” Eyebrows drawn anxiously, Jester’s cold fingers tightening in the material of his shirt, she’s a little more lucid. “Please don’t be sad Caleb, I’m sorry, I-”

He blinks, tears he didn’t notice spilling down his cheeks. Trying to haul her closer even though there’s no space between them, he forces himself to smile. “I- I’m not sad, Jester. How could I be? I’m with you.”

He isn’t sure if she finds his attempt amusing or if she believes his sincerity, but her eyes shine sadly as she smiles in return.

Time bends to his will now. The ritual isn’t even truly difficult- it requires a complicated array of ingredients he couldn’t afford and magic beyond him until a month ago- but the precise steps he needs to take is less than half an hour’s work. But, he hasn’t saved his parents yet because, with his friends asleep beside him in the dark of the night, firelight glowing brightly on his watch, he couldn’t bring himself to.

If Caleb returns to the day he killed his parents and prevents it, he would have to take them a thousand miles from the Empire and hide their identities. He would never become Caleb Widogast. He would never join the Nein, and he would never be their friend.

Nott would have been caught for not having a human companion. Fjord and Jester might have reached the Soltryce Academy. Beauregard would have found trouble, somewhere, without a family to get into it with her. Yasha might have been wrongly found guilty for the attack at Trostenwald. Caduceus would still be waiting in his graveyard for people who would never arrive.

He has to forfeit the lives of his friends.

Jester whispers something and tiny particles of magic shimmer in the air, moving as if through water. They vanish again when she begins to speak. “Hey, mama.”

Throat raw with pain, Caleb closes his eyes and focusses on counting the words in her last message. One, two-

“I miss you, a lot. Um. Will you sing to me? Like when I was little? I love you so much, mama, and I just-”

“Twenty-five,” Caleb says, hoarse and low.

She cuts herself off.

As the corner of her mouth curves up, listening to her mother sing her a lullaby, Caleb kisses her forehead and rocks her gently- not enough movement to cause her more pain, just enough to emulate how someone might hold a child. She clings to him even when her mother’s voice must disappear, and it’s all the reassurance he can give her so he doesn’t stop.

For half an hour, Jester fades in and out of consciousness, eyes unseeing as they blink open when Caleb shakes her. His voice is hard as he says her name, but the horror in his chest is hollow. She’s dying and he’s helpless to it.

No one else even knows.

“Caleb?”

“I’m here, Jester,” he says, desperately soft. “I’m with you.”

“You’re going to be ok,” she whispers, the only strength in her voice her conviction. “You won’t save me, and I know you’re scared, but it’ll be ok.”

“I know it will,” he says. A tear falls out of the corner of her eye and Caleb cups her cheek, wiping it away with his thumb. “I know.”

Her face scrunches up in pain, and he keeps stroking her cheek. “Ok. Good, o_h_-”

The words catch in her throat and she coughs again, sharp and too-fast, suddenly gasping for breath.

Caleb can’t put words to how it ends. He thought she would die by degrees, slipping out of his grip, quick and merciful like sleep, but he kept her alive long enough that she drowns in her own blood. Speaking to her even as she retches and scrabbles for help he can’t give, it’s a stream of consciousness more than real thought, telling her he’s with her and won’t leave her, over and over. He presses his cheek to her cold one as she seizes up, and when she stops breathing, he keeps talking and doesn’t try to save her.

Sacrificing other people at the altar of his desires is the only choice he has ever truly made.

Smoothing down her hair, tears dripping off the end of his nose, he knows it’s the sound of it that’s going to be in his nightmares- of her just trying to _breathe_\- alongside the screams of his parents.

As carefully as he would have when she was alive, he scoops up her body under the legs and kneels upright and lowers her to the ground. Lips parted, eyes closed, if it weren’t for the blood on her hands and the ice of her skin, he might think she was only asleep. He kisses her forehead before he sits back, trying not to sob.

The feeling in his chest- like something inside him shattering, like his grief reached down his throat and seized his heart in its fist- is raw, but not unfamiliar.

Yanking his coat off, movements jerking and uncoordinated, Caleb fumbles for his spellbook and upends his duffel bag on the floor. Items scatter, the floor only just a big enough space for him to work in, and his shaking hands cast aside everything he doesn’t need. He pulls out chalk and begins to draw, spellbook flipped open at his side to the only page without Jester’s doodles on.

Is he supposed to be able to recall the sound of his mother’s laughter? What his father might have said to inspire it from her? He’s not even sure he knows who they were, and his need to save his parents has become a madness of its own, as destructive and vengeful as the fire he killed them with.

Is his mind his own, or has it only transferred custody, Ikithon to insanity to trauma? Is he supposed to be able to trust his own choices-?

Hands grimy with Jester’s blood, he scrubs the tears on his face away with the back of his wrists, and he doesn’t even hesitate as he recites the incantation.

Caleb has been many things to many different people- a son, a follower, a murderer, a cheat and a liar, a friend- but he once helped Jester to her feet and she swooned dramatically, hand over her forehead as she ‘fell’ against his chest, and declared him her hero. When he stared her down, amused and fond more than irritated because it’s difficult to find her antics anything other than charming, she bopped his nose and winked, dancing off to conspire with Nott.

The good in him she believed in died with her, because it was always hers.

As relentless as he is, it takes Caleb less than twenty minutes to conjure the portal. His words fill the echoing space around him and he’s exhausted but he doesn’t notice, hardly blinking.

It’s only when he reaches for his coat, digging into the hidden pocket tucked inside on the left, he looks to Jester. His fingers close around the pouch of diamonds he couldn’t buy himself- she tossed them at him like a set of keys a few weeks ago, saying he probably has some _pretty cool_ spells he could use them for even though they would make very cute jewellery, skipping off before he even looked at its contents.

He thought making ash of his past would find him redemption. He thought saving his parents would salvage some kind of forgiveness.

He has everything he wanted and he’s still going to burn.

Rising to his feet, unsteady on the uneven floor as he forces himself to look away from her body, the glittering gems in his hand, he drops them into the middle of the arcane symbols on the floor. They turn to dust before they even touch the floor, scattering like there’s a draft and leaping back upwards like white flames, the portal too-bright in the dark, and Caleb flinches, shielding his eyes with his hand as they adjust.

He knows what to expect; he spoke to an old man who had cast it once himself. Step through and into your own past, whichever moment you want. Forcing himself to breathe, terrified, he pictures the moment before the flames- he has to save his _family_\- and walks forwards.

It feels like an ordinary portal, an ordinary transition- but then he breathes in and he can’t mistake the shift into another body; heart racing, breathless, his left arm’s curled awkwardly to his chest, the pain splitting at his broken elbow.

The noise hits next, the chaos of the fight reverberating off cavern walls as high as fortresses in some places. Beauregard yells a series of crude curse words as she strikes, grunting with the force of the hit, and Fjord roars, blade slashing through the air at the wizard they’re trying to kill- but where Caleb reached for phosphorus with his good hand last time, casting the flames without so much as glancing behind him, where a small, blue hand found his arm and cast healing before the smallest ‘oh’ huffed out of her, more surprised than anything at the blade between her ribs- Caleb spins on the spot and grabs for the powder at the same time, coat billowing.

Jester’s running towards him, determined and worried, already shouting at him. “Caleb-!”

“GET _DOWN_!” he yells, gesturing with the hand full of phosphorus and she _drops_, slamming into the ground, hands covering her head as the ball of fire flies from Caleb’s fingers.

It misses the man following Jester but he’s forced to dodge it, momentum thrown- and Jester’s already back on her feet. Before he can even raise the blade he stabbed her in the back with, she slashes his throat open with hers, all grim viciousness as she attacks again, her sword plunging into his gut.

The man falls to his knees at Jester’s feet, clutching his throat in disbelief, and she yanks her blade free by bracing a foot on the man’s shoulder and pulling. He topples back, dying and not quite yet dead, and Caleb lingers on him.

There should be victory or relief or _something_, but he hasn’t got the time to feel any of it because the fight isn’t done yet.

Turning again, he barely looks back to the battle before he throws out a line of fire, catching alight along the ground like gunpowder. Like last time, he takes Beau by surprise and Yasha has to drag her out of the way.

It serves as no more than a distraction but it works and Caleb has served his purpose, so he doesn’t wait to watch the last few blows. He missed them last time, too.

Difficult on the uneven rocks with only one arm for balance, he runs to Jester and shoves her back as he collides with her, forearm across her chest and pushing as hard as he can. He doesn’t have enough time to grab her and get her out from under the rockfall, he just has to trust the Nein, he just has to _hope_-

She’s bewildered but follows his lead, backing up until he has her crowded up to the wall of the cave, her hands resting on him, uncertain.

His arm curls around her head to protect the side his cheek isn’t against, covering her body with his own. There’s a _crack_ of magic behind Caleb, both of them flinching, and the ground begins to tremble, distant aftershocks beginning.

“Caleb-?”

“Don’t heal me. Save the spell,” he says, even and sure in her ear, underneath the shouts behind them to duck for cover, the fractures in the foundations around them ear-splitting. “It will be alright, _liebste_. I promise.”

He presses her even further into the wall when she makes a tiny sound of fear, his eyes squeezing shut, face buried in her hair.

***

When the crunches and cracks of rocks slamming against each other wanes, settling as it slows, the dust still thick in the air, Caleb pulls back enough to look at her. Her eyes squint open and she scrubs her face, disorientation becoming curiosity as she uses him for balance, rising on her tiptoes and peering over his shoulder to see where they are.

“Are you well?” he asks, hand on her waist and searching up her back, trying to feel for the wound he knows wasn’t inflicted.

Her gaze flicks back to him, pulling a face.

“Jester?”

“Your arm is _broken_.”

“I know.” Last time, Caleb was already bundling up his scarf into a makeshift plug for the bleeding, the worst of the damage was done when the man yanked the blade out and went to strike Caleb too. This time, she’s not non-verbal with shock, teeth chattering as Caleb talks, trying to keep calm. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she says, sticking her tongue out at him when he nods. “You’re being weird.”

“I am very weird,” he agrees.

Her face is dirty with dust, and Caleb strokes her cheek with the back of his fingers even as her eyes glitter dangerously under his strange scrutiny.

For a brief, odd moment, Caleb truly believes he imagined it.

But he glances back, behind himself. They’re trapped in the same place, with the same slither of light creeping through twenty feet above them. It’s far too high and steep to climb to. The rocks have even fallen in the same pattern, the place where he laid Jester’s body down a few steps to his right.

His hand has the callouses where he holds his quill, phosphorous clinging in the lines of his skin and under his nails. They’re scraped and battered from the fight, but the only blood on them is his own.

Lungs irritated by the dust, she coughs once, short and dry, and Caleb forces himself to straighten and step away as she reaches into her bag.

“I could… draw a door?” she suggests uncertainly, but her nose wrinkles when her hand comes up black with unusable ink. “_Ew_. Ah, shit.”

Caleb already knew that vial smashed, having discovered it himself when he was searching for a healing potion for her. Neither of them possess anything that might get them out.

Hand moving to hold his arm firmly, he takes some of the weight off the broken joint. “I think we’re trapped.”

“Well, um, that’s ok,” she says, high-pitched in that way she is when she’s trying to sound upbeat but she’s afraid, “um, I could, maybe-”

“Jester,” Caleb says, gentle. “You have two messages.”

The surprise distracts her; she narrows her eyes, exaggerated and suspicious. “How do _you_ know I have two messages left?”

“I pay attention to you.”

She holds her first two fingers up to her eyes and then stabs the fingers at him, the universal gesture for ‘I’m watching you’ that only makes Caleb smile as she casts a message. “Fj_ord_, Caleb is being stupid. He won’t let me heal him-”

“We’re trapped and we need help,” he adds, and she waves a hand at him, shushing him.

“-and we’re trapped and please can you come save us? We’re by some rocks.” Her eyes slide out of focus as she listens to the answer, but her mouth curves upwards into a smirk when Caleb laughs out loud. “He says Beau saw where we were when the rocks come down, so they’re already digging but it’s going to take a them a while. And he said you should let me heal you, _Caleb_.”

“He did not say that,” Caleb says mildly, trying to slide down the wall to sitting, awkward with his arm pulled to his chest. The dull throb of it isn’t unbearable, just deeply uncomfortable, and the adrenaline in his veins is abating, leaving space for the pain and exhaustion to trickle in. He twists it, just enough to make the bone grind and distract him, flinching. “There weren’t enough words.”

She makes an irritated _tsch _sound, huffing, but he just meets her scowl with evenness. Giving up, she rolls her eyes and doesn’t fight him on it, dropping to sitting cross legged in front of him.

He watches her rearrange her dress, making the hem over her legs and fan out over the floor, his eyes not quite closing even though he wants to. Her tail curls neatly around her, tongue stuck out in concentration. He wants to summon Frumpkin to curl up in her lap, help her keep warm in the deadening cold of the cave, but he hasn’t the energy even for that.

Looking up at him through her eyelashes, pausing in her fussing, Jester returns his open observation for a few moments. “I wish you would let me heal you. I’m a cleric, Caleb.”

“_Ja_, I know. Truthfully, I thought you would have wrestled me to the ground and forced me to accept your help by now.”

It’s half a joke, a gentle poke at his own physical weakness, but she recoils like he’s slapped her. He watches as her expression skitters between emotions- concern in her frown, nervousness in the fidgeting of her hands, reluctance in her eyes- and she looks at her hands. Not quite sure what he said, he wants to make it right, but she seems to come to some kind of decision before he can think what to say.

She leans towards him, forearms on her legs, and her eyes are bright and fierce as they settle on his. “I won’t do _anything_ to you you don’t want me to, Caleb. Ever.”

It’s pointed, referring to something specific. She’s trying to tell him something.

She’s known only parts of the story for so long, and Caleb was comfortable with it because she never asked questions or tried to demand more from him than he was willing to give. Her innocence to the worst parts of his pain meant he could pretend it wasn’t real, sometimes. He could hide from it.

But her wisdom isn’t the same as Caduceus’; she’s wise in her kindness, understanding so very much more than she says. Of course she already knew. Of course she was too generous.

He underestimated her.

“How long have you known?”

“A few months,” she says, quieter.

He wants to ask who told her, but it doesn’t truly matter. It was probably no more than a slip of the tongue that couldn’t be unheard. He doubts they intended to betray his confidence. “That’s a very long time.”

“It’s not, so much. I’m very good at keeping secrets, you know,” she says sincerely, but he shakes his head.

“I, ah- I meant, to not… have questions.”

She considers that. “Well, some of the things you say used to be very confusing. They’re not anymore.”

He wonders exactly what that means- what he says, what makes sense in ways they didn’t before- but he doesn’t ask. “I murdered my parents because I wanted to prove my loyalty to the Empire, Jester.”

“You murdered your parents because Trent Ikithon played fuckaroo with your brain,” she says, eyebrow raised.

“They- that’s- I still _wanted _it, I-”

“I think you’re much more the person who wants to save them than the person who killed them,” she says, taking the hand he’s squeezing his broken arm with and enclosing it in both of her own, warm and gentle.

The scars etched into his wrists are visible above her fingers. “No. I will always be a murderer.”

“Not if you bring them back,” she says, knowing more than he thought he would ever tell her, the tears hot in his eyes, “and whatever you need, we will help. We want to help you, you know?”

The tears fall as he closes his eyes. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Their deaths put me here, Jester,” he says, and he’s too tired to grieve but his body wants to anyway. “If I save them, I will never meet any of you.”

The shock seems to make her smaller, somehow, but she exhales and strokes his hand with her thumbs. She forces herself to smile, nodding. “Ok. That’s ok.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s- oh, Caleb,” she says, tears spilling and yet still smiling. “You’re _allowed_ to want that- you’re our family now whether or not we meet then, and we will _help _you-”

Caleb shakes his head, easing his hand free of her grip and reaching into his coat pocket. Her handing over that many diamonds suddenly makes so much sense- she knows what he was trying to do, and she found out exactly what spell he would use to make it happen- and he pulls out the empty pouch to offer it to her.

“I won’t do it again, Jester,” he says, and she’s bewildered because he used them and his parents are still dead.

Trying to read him as she wipes her tears away, even though they fall just as quickly, the hopelessness in her voice as she speaks is raw. “I don’t _understand_.”

She wouldn’t. He doesn’t, yet. He doesn’t even know who he is without obsession roaring at him, telling him what to run to, what to hide from. He tries to find the fewest words he can to explain it.

“Undoing time is power only a god should have, and I cannot possible know the consequences of it. But, I do know- with some certainty- that abandoning you all would… I might live a long, happy life. But the Nein would not.”

Thinking through the impossible decision he had, holding back her pain, she looks at the empty pouch in her hands. “But- you’ve used them. You must have done something, Caleb.”

He hesitates, and she swallows, watching him.

“What did you change?”

Not telling her would be generous, in some ways. It may shield her from misplaced guilt, it may help her understand his choices, the way he wants to touch her- but she’s not stupid, and he’s already told her so few truths.

“You died.”

“I- oh.”

She can’t seem to make sense of that, her understanding of the last hour incomparable to his, and doesn’t speak.

Sitting up, mirroring the way she’s sat so close their knees touch, Caleb twists his broken bone again, gradually, bringing himself out of his own head enough. “Here, in fact. In my arms. It was less than an hour ago, to me.”

Pressing her lips together and bowing her head, she still doesn’t speak. He wants to reach out but he doesn’t let himself indulge, giving her time to process it, and when she finally looks to him, she’s not crying even though she’s close to it.

“Am I- um. Can I say thank you?”

Laughter- incredulous and confused- bursts out of him, and he’s nodding before he speaks. He will regret his parent’s deaths for as long as he’s alive, but he will never regret her life. “Of course, _ja_, of course you can.”

“Ok.” Getting up to kneeling, she leans over him and touches her forehead to his, eyes fluttering shut. “Thank you, Caleb Widogast.”

“You are most welcome, Jester Lavorre.”

When her fingers touch his broken arm, a gentle question, he whispers to her to go ahead. It only takes a few words spoke aloud and the bone fixes itself in place, the sensation shuddering up his arm, the abrasions on his knuckles smoothing over. His hands find her waist as she says sorry, the incomprehensible apology he’s ever received, but he lets her have it.

She shifts back after a little while because she’s in a difficult position to hold for long, her smile small, and he tugs on her waist. Raising her eyebrows in a gentle tease, she follows his lead, shuffling forward and straddling his lap.

“This is very _sexy_, Ca_leb_,” she says, drawing his name out, and he rolls his eyes, wiping her eyes.

“If you say so, Jester.”

“I do say so,” she says, knowledgeable. “I have read lots of books too, you know.”

“I’m very aware,” he says, and she smiles again, in that rare way she does when she feels completely understood, and unafraid of it- small, and sincere.

They settle into the embrace after a few moments. She’s inside his coat, arms loose around his waist, face in the crook of his neck, legs propped up at his sides, and he’s wrapped around her, the weight and warmth of her comforting even as they slip in and out of waking. He breathes her in and holds her tight.

Several hours later- after Jester gave in to her impatience, using her last message to tell Beau to hurry up please they’re cold and bored, after the truth of what he’d done finally settled in and he grieved for his parents, sobbing like he never had before because he’d never been hopeless for them until now, after Jester promised she wouldn’t speak a word of what happened until he was ready, even if that was never- they finally extricate themselves from each other.

They hear the rock shifting and stand in a panic, getting back from the collapse that never happens. Hands claw through the gravel ten feet above them, and a huge boulder is pulled back slowly. Beau’s head suddenly appears in the hole there, and when she sees them staring up at her, she slumps her head onto her arms for a few seconds, battered and bruised and _relieved_.

Then, she yells over her shoulder that they’ve found them, and the answering yells of triumph are distinct even as Caleb gives Jester a boost up to Beau’s waiting grip, helping haul her up and out.

But Caleb hesitates, turning back to the empty room. He’s stood where he was when the portal appeared, and his eyes are drawn to the spot where he lay her body to rest. Picking up the pouch from where Jester dropped it, he turns it over in his fingers.

“Caleb? You getting out of here or what?”

He looks up, and Beau’s waiting for him, hanging out of the wall like it’s part of her daily routine.

“_Ja_,” he says, putting the pouch back down and standing, striding over and taking her offered hand.

He still has his family.

**Author's Note:**

> I made two sad realizations writing this; Liam has not written a character that gets a happy ending, and _I need Liam to give Caleb a happy ending_


End file.
